Monday, March 31, 2008

"Together with another facilitator we are scribing for each other regularly. So during a session we switch from facilitation to scribing. Knowing the process, even the agenda precisely is of a great help for scribing. Even more when as a facilitator we have to change the agenda during the session: the one who is scribing this time can follow easily!"

Working regularly as a team, a scribe and a facilitator build a communication protocol that allows them to continually make the other partner look good and thereby provide a much better experience for the client.I am doing a two-day facilitation with a scribe the week of April 7th and will report back on how it went...

Any other experiences people would like to share? I am still looking for another name for the scribing function....

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Kristen Peterson related an interesting story in a March 3rd comment that I thought was worth sharing...she points to several of the pitfalls in facilitating a group when you don't have the right scribing resources...

"This is very timely -- I did an all day facilitation with a client last week. An in-house facilitator at the client had read Tim Hurson’s book Think Better and wanted to try the process internally on their biz relationship with one of their clients -- a $20 million account for them - on how to improve the relationship, increase revenue, be seen as a trusted advisor, and broaden and deepen the relationship.

I was primarily there to "observe," introduce the principles of productive thinking, and step in if things started to fall apart I stepped in halfway into the first step -- mostly because the facilitator, Tina, had arranged for someone on her team to "take notes" on a laptop – basically a clerical from the team -- which clearly wasn't happening. So I took over facilitating and Tina picked up the scribing. The scribing dragged me down as a facilitator -- Tina didn't know the process well enough. I would have moved to paper and scribed for myself but the room was tiny and there was little space to move around.

Lesson learned: the scribe must know the process AND be a fast and accurate typist -- otherwise they can totally slow things down and divert the focus of both the facilitator and the group . If asked again I would say no to a "note taker" and provide my own scribe, or less desirably, scribe for myself.

Big additional benefit having a scribe -- having an expert in the process greatly improves the quality of note capture and dramatically speeds up convergence.

In feedback from the group, one of the more senior participants recognized that the electronic note taking got in the way."Any other stories out there?

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

John Sedgwick makes a good point in a comment about Tuesday, March 4th's posting regarding using Post-It notes for idea generation and the role of the scribe. In fact, whether scribing with flip charts or on a computer, using Post-it notes when trying to capture a long list of ideas is very effective. (Having a big wall that can take lots of notes or using poster paper to cover a wall and then attach the notes are two quite effective methods for doing this.)

The scribe can be of great assistance here in doing some of the preliminary clustering as the ideas are stuck up on the wall, with the participants doing heavy clustering once they have stopped generating ideas.

Alternatively, the scribe can capture the ideas on the computer as they are called out...but this can be difficult when the ideas are coming fast and furious.

John then asks: "Now this brings up the question of dealing with these ideas, once they are themed. If we split the participants into sub-groups and allow each sub to take a cluster away, for word smithing immediately, or for some future report, what role does the scribe play in that process? Secondly, how might the scribe facilitate that, so that we get the maximum breadth of participation, but also a high degree of efficiency?"

My thoughts here are that as each subgroup reports out it's word-smithed-idea -- whether immediately or in a future session -- the scribe captures that idea just has s/he has been all along. The scribe can't capture each subgroup's deliberations, but that is probably okay. Also, as the subgroups are doing their word smithing, the scribe can support the facilitator in rotating through the subgroups to keep them on track.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

I have been fascinated by the concept of graphic/visual scribing like that promoted by Grove. (I just received an email from Grove which sparked this post.) While the visual approach of Grove is quite appealing, I have never actually seen it used. I would like to hear from others about how effective it is.

I know that text scribing -- when done well -- generates very useful output that can be put to use by the team. Does the visual scribing approach actual produce output that can be put to use? I suspect the visual approach may be fun to experience, but am concerned about the usability of the output. It is probably a matter of context -- the visual approach works well in some applications while the textual approach is better suited to other situations.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

When we talk about scribing in the facilitation sense, we are talking about capturing the ideas and decisions produced by participants in a facilitated meeting. This mostly involves capturing long lists of ideas and helping the facilitator and participants choose the best ideas from those lists.

Capturing long lists of ideasThe scriber needs to accurately capture the ideas generated. This is often done with flip charts and markers. It can also be done electronically on a laptop with the screen projected on the wall so all can see what is being captured. The scribe should capture as accurately as possible the ideas generated, but does not need to capture verbatim all comments or ideas. Part of the skill in effective scribing is to distill the sometimes loquacious ideas of participants while capturing the essence of their ideas. The scribe needs to be continually checking back with the participants to be sure the captured ideas accurately reflect the participant's ideas.

Upcoming posts will talk about how the scribe helps the participants and the facilitator choose from the lists and work closely with facilitator. We will also talk about the skills of the scribe, tools for the scribe, and other topics generated by the comments.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

I have started this blog to explore the nature of meeting facilitation and scribing. I facilitate meetings and help others facilitate meetings and have found that the assistance of a scribe -- or note taker or recorder -- greatly enhances the meetings. Yet, when trying to convince clients of the usefulness of an independent scribe to work with the lead facilitator, we often meet much resistance. Sometimes clients do not want to pay the extra as they do not see its value. Sometimes they say "oh, we have someone who can take notes." Yet, when we have provided a second facilitator to act as scribe, the meetings turn out to be at least twice as productive.

The lead facilitator can focus on the people in the room and managing the discussion without worrying about what is being captured.

The second facilitator provides a second set of eyes and ears to support the lead facilitator.

All ideas are captured and saved for use in the future, so no one's ideas get "lost."

When done electronically and posted with a projector on the wall, the ideas evolve with the discussion and the meeting ends with a report already written.

This is just the beginning of my thoughts and I am hoping others will join in with their thoughts about the role of a "scribe" in facilitating meetings. (I would even like to come up with another name for the role...)

About Me

Currently a productive thinking scribe, facilitator, and trainer, Paul is an economist and student of consumer behavior and has been a marketing professional for 30 years. He serves as treasurer on the Board of Trustees for the Creative Education Foundation, is on the Board of Trustees for Hudson Guild — a 100-year-old+ settlement house in NYC, facilitates not-for-profits and serves as the New York Hub Leader for Facilitators Without Borders, is on the faculty of the Creative Problem Solving Institute, and serves on numerous community organizations.
Paul has helped firms such as JPMorgan, HSBC, Bankers Trust, and Citibank develop marketing strategies targeting the sophisticated banking and investment management needs of affluent and private banking clients in the US, Japan, and Europe. Before entering the financial services industry, Paul was an associate scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory where he modeled energy supply and demand responses to changes in energy pricing and availability using large-scale econometric and linear programming models. He holds an MA and doctorate in economics from SUNY Stony Brook.